Charlie watched Fletcher disappear into the crowd, his words still ringing in her head. Cops aren't the only ones looking. Another person jostled Charlie, and she resisted the urge to shout at someone. Just what the hell was the deal with New Yorkers, why couldn't they walk around her? She made a beeline for the precinct, taking the steps two at a time. Charlie found Mac and Flack waiting for her inside the observation room where she'd been a moment before.
"Where'd you go?" Flack asked when she slipped inside. Mac stood in front of the window, his eyes fixed on the empty chair where Fletcher had been.
"Restroom," Charlie said without thinking. Fletcher's words were still bouncing around in her head. "How do you guys feel about Fletcher?"
"He's good for it," Mac said. He still had the manila folder that contained the photos in his hands. "We just have to find the evidence to prove it."
"The work records are on the way," Flack said. "If it turns out that Fletch was never scheduled to work a job at the warehouse it would prove he was there for something other than work. We could get a warrant, maybe find the gun at his place."
"Work records aren't going to be enough for a warrant," Mac pointed out.
"There were bruises," Charlie said. She felt weight of their gazes shift to her. "Across the top of his left hand and knuckles."
"He could've got them from beating the witness," Flack said.
Mac shook his head. "Work records and bruises are enough for a warrant but not a conviction."
"They are if we find the gun," Flack said.
They waited in silence while Mac mulled this over. Charlie couldn't take her eyes off the folder in his hands, couldn't erase from her mind the image of the body on the cold table and the splotchy bruises that had covered the chest. She remembered Fletcher, not as he'd been that morning but as he'd been on the street just moments before, bristling with anger. It was easy, too easy, to imagine the hand he'd put on her arm clenching into a fist.
"Every minute we don't have the gun is another minute Fletcher might use to get rid of it," Mac said. "Take the records straight to a judge when you get them, Flack. We need the gun, and we need the warrant to get it."
Mac gave Charlie the evidence bag containing the bullet that had killed Aaron Batey and sent her to ballistics as soon as they were back in the lab. She opened the evidence bag and emptied the petri dish of fragments onto the clean white table. After donning a pair of gloves, Charlie emptied the contents of the petri dish too. She stared hard then at the handful of metal pieces in front of her, as if willing them to reassemble themselves. At that moment Charlie would have done anything to have been able to trade jobs with Flack, who was busy digging up any and all dirt he could on Fletcher.
It was all just busywork meant to keep them occupied until the warrant came through, but Charlie would've still preferred Flack's assignment over her own. She couldn't get Fletcher's face out of her mind. It was like an unseen force kept pushing him there to the forefront of her thoughts. Charlie kept imagining him at the warehouse, the scene of the crime. Only he wasn't the shooter in Charlie's recreation, he was the victim, and he lay on the dust free floor with a hole in his chest and a pool of blood oozing out from under him. Cops aren't the only ones looking.
She tried to clear her mind and focus on her work. She used a 3D scan gun and started imaging the pieces of the bullet one by one. When that was done she set the program to analyzing them and searching for how they fit together. The greatest advantage of technology, Charlie thought to herself as she pulled off her gloves, was the ability to multitask. She grabbed a copy of the case file she'd brought with her and began to leaf through the pages while the computer did her job for her.
Charlie went through the crime scene photos first, going over the facts for the umpteenth time. She reexamined the photos one by one and read the witness account. She kept turning the pages, and then there he was, staring up at her from the confines of his grayscale mugshot. Fletcher's rap sheet had been added to the file, and there were a couple of lines beneath the photo detailing Fletcher's arrest. There was only one, dated almost eight years earlier when Fletcher had been seventeen. The file listed the bare minimum about the arrest, stating only that Fletcher had been convicted of possession of an illegal substance with intent to sell. Although a non-violent offense, Charlie had seen criminals do anywhere from one to ten years for the same charge. Fletcher had received six years of probation for his conviction, which was an arguably light sentence. Of course, he had technically been a minor at the time. Charlie turned the page, looking for more information. There was nothing else on the front or back of the page except for the one arrest, no other evidence of Fletcher's many brushes with the law.
Charlie put the file aside and minimized the window on the computer. She pulled up a new webpage and opened Fletcher's file in the criminal database. His photo—with the exception of color—was identical to the one printed on the rap sheet. There were, however, a number of notes that had been added to Fletcher's file that hadn't been in the case file. Charlie scrolled down through the list that'd been made by detectives who'd come across Fletcher in their investigations. There were at least a dozen cases that dealt with drug trafficking, each coupled with notes detailing Fletcher's suspected involvement in each one. He'd been marked as a possible junkie in some, a dealer or supplier in others. There had never been anything in any case to implement Fletcher, no evidence to close the cuffs around his wrists or to warrant having the information permanently added to his rap sheet. Fletcher was incredibly clean, Charlie decided. Dirty, but clean. She also noted that he'd never had any suspected involvement in any violent offenses. No assaults, not even a single harassment case was mentioned.
"What've you found so far?" Mac asked from the doorway.
Charlie quickly closed the tab, and found that the computer had finished reconstructing the bullet. "Caliber is a .22, but the bullet is too damaged to run a search. We'll find a hundred matches in the database with what we have."
"We'll have to go off the caliber then," Mac said.
"The warrant came through?" Charlie's heart did a neat little flip flop in her chest. She'd forgotten how nerve wracking a case could be. The warrant was a gamble, but if it came through it could only mean good news.
"Fletcher was telling the truth about working the job at the warehouse," Mac said. "The records proved that."
"Then why did the judge give us the warrant if he was telling the truth?" Charlie asked.
"He didn't lie about the job, he lied about not knowing the victim," Mac explained. "He worked the warehouse job with Aaron Batey."
Been a little longer than usual since I updated. As always any questions, comments, true stories of adventure appreciated, so don't forget to drop me a line! =)